Nothing is Left

I wanted you all these years. I wanted the edge of your dress in my teeth. I wanted the slice of light on your neck in the mornings. I sit opposite you every day in silence and pretend I don’t see you. I pretend I am a tall tree with blue bark. I pretend I am the door you open on your way to other places that are not me. Once you dropped a peanut from your purse, a peanut on the way to your lips and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be the peanut you bit into or the lips that touched it. I wait for the evenings of the world so you can be still, so you can stop your hurrying pace and fall silent in the sun. Those times, I feel you. This limbo, disembodied. I emerge from the wall where I live and settle in the hollow of the chair beside you and imagine the heft of your arm on what is left of me. Nothing is left—memory is dead.

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